RR Chapter 11

Bring It Home

Critique Your Work
Debrief with your planning team. This will allow you to think about how the project with your students went with your colleagues.  Talking to them will allow you time to hear feedback and give feedback to yourself and others.  This also gives colleagues time to review students' work together and to talk about wether or not the teachers believe the students fully understand the content in their projects or not.

Share Your Insights
Share your project ideas with places that teachers go to gain inspiration for projects.  This may include SchoolNet.
Create a project library.
Put the projects online, like the class or school website.
Publish your projects online, websites invite teachers to share examples.

Become a Resource For Colleagues
Blog so other teachers can gain insight from you and ideas from you.  One teacher talked about as a first year teacher, just writing on a blog is good enough.  You do not need to add links or pictures, just get used to everything and go from there!

Creating a project for your students to do and follow through is great! A great way to get ideas and share ideas is through blogging with other teachers, and collaborating with colleagues. 

Chapter 11 Bringing It Home

Capitalize on your investment

·       What did you do to help make your project successful?

·       Did you use technology? If so did the technology make a difference for your students and their learning?  By reading thus far I have learned that using technology in a project really does make a difference.  Students seem to be more engaged in a project when it involves the use of technology. 

·       As a teacher did you learn any new ways of how to communicate with parents and organize the classroom around a project? Parents like to know what their children are doing in class and as a teacher it is important to find a sufficient way to let the parents know what is going on. 

Critique your work

·       Your project may have gone very well, but don’t let that stop you from trying to make it any better.

·       Talk to some of the teachers in your school and ask if they have any suggestions to make the project even better.

·       “Plan a project debrief with your planning team, and use this opportunity to draw out each other’s best ideas for improvement.” (161)

Share your insights

·       You took the time and effort to create a project so why not share it with others.

·       Share your idea with a network

·       Allow other teachers to view what you did so that they may create a project similar to yours. 

Become a resource for your colleagues

·       Be the teacher that other teachers come to you when they have questions about a project.

·       Encourage them to think outside the box.

Enter a contest

·       Don’t be afraid to enter your project in a contest.  That way you get your work out there and can get positive and constructive feedback. 

Enjoy the journey

·       Take time to reflect on all that you have accomplished in the project.  Just because the project is done you can still talk with your students about the wonderful job they did. 

Reading Reflection #10

Reading Reflection #10

Celebrating and Reflecting

 

Reflect on the Journey

·         Ask students to reflect on their development of skills and knowledge

·         Think about the growth of the students and have each of them reflect on their growth as well

·         If there were any obstacles (which there probably were) have the students reflect on their obstacles and how they would be able to overcome them if faced with them again.

 

Elaborate: Where to Now?

At the end of the project that your class is working on, the teacher can easily lead the students into a new project.  By asking the students where they would like to go from here, it can lead them to think about what they would like to do next.  What else do they want to learn? What kinds of things are they curious about from this project that they would like to further explore? From here, you can talk to your students about where they would like to go from here. 

 

Celebrate and Display

This is one big aspect of our project.  We believe letting our students display their work for the entire class is see is really important.  This is a great way to get our students involved and really into their own project.  If they are excited about performing then they will get into the research and the production that they are doing. 

Chapter 10

Chapter 10- Celebrating and Reflecting

Reflect on the Journey

·       In schools things move at a quick pace.  As soon as one project or activity is completed we move right onto the next one. 

·       It is important to reflect on the things students learned during the project.  They may reflect several things like certain activities. 

·       You must put time aside to REFLECT on learning.

·       “Ask students how specific learning behaviors factored into the success of the project.” (147)

·       Remind students why they are reflecting.

Plan your reflection Questions

·       Focus your questions on the things that matter the most.  For example, you want your students to reflect on the key learning points. 

·       Some ways to get students to answer the questions is to probe, prompt, ask why, or encourage them to expand things further. 

Elaborate: Where to Now

·       “A successful project is the springboard for the next cycle of learning.”  (149)

·       What do your students want to learn next?  Are there things that students want to learn more about?

·       Do the students want to come up with their own project?

Build Tradition and Identity: “We are the school where kids get to..”

·       What is your school going to be known for? Does it have traditions?  Is it known for something special?

·       How can your school create a tradition?  Do you even want your school to have a tradition?

·       I think I would like my school to have a tradition because then you could draw more parents to have their children come to your school.

·       “As community members begin to notice and value students’ accomplishments, they will give you enthusiastic support.” (150)

Celebrate!

·       Show off what your students did!  Plan an event or celebration.

Display student work

·       Put the students work somewhere that others can see it.  That way they can get recognition for all the hard work they did.

Year-in-review retrospective to celebrate learning

·       Think of all the projects your students have done.

·       “When the school year comes to an end, hold a retrospective Year in Review event.”(154)

Chapter 10 Reading Reflection

1.) Setting aside time for reflection:

 There is rarely any time to reflect upon new knowledge being learned  in school. When students have the chance and time to reflect, they can think about what was really important to them about the project as well as what they learned.  Reflection allows students to look back at the project in hindsight and evaluate the successful and unsuccessful parts of the project- what they would or would not  do differently


2.) Reasons why students should reflect and elaborate:

  It's noted that reflection is a crucial part in learning. When students are able to reflect, they can create their own meaning to every aspect of the learning process. The reflection should be meaningful, personal and important to them. Setting aside time to reflect gives the students a chance to think about every aspect of the project, such as skill development, learning behaviors associated and how the project has changed some aspect of their learning process or knowledge gained.

  It may be a good idea for the teacher to provide their students with reflection questions that emphasize what the teacher's objective were for their students- such as overcoming obstacles, collaboration and other 21st century skills that the teacher wanted her students to learn. 

  Successful projects can potentially change the ways students view the learning process, and increase their passion to become better learners.  They may be excited and anticipating their next challenge.  When students reflect, they are able to elaborate on what they need for their next project.  

3.) Schools Tradition and Identity

   Establishing a culture in the classroom is the first step for students to have pride in their school and learning. Students want to be proud of where they spend 7 hours of their day, so establishing a tradition or culture in the classroom that entails being really good at PBL is something that can be done by teachers. A key word in this section of the chapter is Enthusiasm. If the teacher is enthusiastic about what the students are learning then that will show the students that its ok to be excited. Schools establish their identity by what the students accomplish, so if the students accomplishments are shown throughout the school, then it shows potential students and parents that this is a great place to go to school.

4.) Celebrating a project

  
 Who doesnt love to celebrate? After all the hard work the project demands, its extremely important for their to be a celebration of recognition. Involving either just the class, the school, the families or the community will make the students feel proud.  Classroom displays, hall displays, reward ceremonies or planned events are some ways the students can celebrate. Even taking a field trip or having a guest speaker come can be a way for students to celebrate.  Letting the students take charge in planning the celebration can be another part of the PBL experience. At the celebration, make sure there is time for looking back at the project process, showing the hard work and dedication of the students, a display of what was learned,  opportunities for students to speak about their experience.

5.) I really enjoyed reading about how to plan a celebration. Since we are going to have a performance at the end of the year, it was insightful to know what goes into planning a celebration.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9 Making Assessment Meaningful

Establish Anchors

·        When does the students learning start?  You have to set a start point or an anchor for the beginning of learning. 

·        “By establishing anchors you gain a sense of where students are starting and how far they are going as they work to meet learning goals.” (140)

·        The quality of the learning experience is important

Grades that Matter

·        How will you measure student progress?

·        How will you know that your students completed the learning goals?

·        Design a rubric that is easy for students to follow.  If you have a complicated rubric that is difficult for students to follow they may not complete the assignment properly.

·        “Teachers want a reliable way to assess how well students have mastered key content.” (141)

Ask Students: What did you learn?

·        Ask your students to reflect on the things they learned

·        Have your students give you specific examples of things they learned.

Create something new

·        When the project comes to a close have your students create something new to show what they learned in the project. 

Model Real-World Assessment

·        If the students are doing real world projects then they must be assessed in the same way.

Enter a contest or submit for publication

·        “Taking the idea of discipline-based assessment a step further, some teachers encourage students to submit their best work to a competition or enter it for publication.” (144)

·        Students may find opportunities like this to be motivating and also challenging.